The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday

Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr

Burned

“The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Paige Ledom

Out of the ordinary

The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend

How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths

Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union by Richard Carwardine

Cudillero

“The Terrorist, He’s Watching” by Wislawa Szymborska

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

Thanks for the Gratitude

But what’s the upside for the curmudgeon?

Like Dancing Down the Aisle

Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters

A well-told story always feels true

A Tinkering Kind of Guy

The absence of arrogance

Aloft

What’s eating New Orleans?

Making of the Moon

It’s still not cut and dried

The Writer Who Taught

Remembering William Zinsser

How to Write a Memoir

Be yourself, speak freely, and think small

Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone

The shock of recognition

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